


"See What Makes Him Tick"

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Corporal Punishment, Dissection, H.I.V.E. Five, Introspection, Other, The H.I.V.E., Unrequited Crush, cool tech, crudmuncher, hints of gore and stuff, lots of candy and energy drinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, Gizmo would say he hadn’t been joking about slicing Kid Flash apart; the chemical juices in that snot-licking superhero’s brain were firing weird, for sure.</p><p>Of course, as a wild-eyed kid raised among nefarious wannabe supervillains, Gizmo's got a lot going on in his head.  The H.I.V.E.'s left him scars aplenty, but it's not like the need to adapt his tech to confront new superpowered knuckleheads ever really goes away.  There's Jinx to think about, too, and this shiny new future life of crime she's got mapped out for everyone.  </p><p>This story stems from Gizmo's line in the episode "Lightspeed" -- "Let's take him apart and see what makes him tick!"  Really, it's set between Madame Rouge's appearance in "Lightspeed" and Jinx running off with Kid Flash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"See What Makes Him Tick"

**Author's Note:**

> while this story focuses most on "Lightspeed," it references a few occurrences from other episodes, too, like Gizmo rearranging BB's CD collection in "Final Exam," and that dodge ball team from Teen Titans Go (I'm sorry), etc, etc. I know from the internet that comics-Gizmo used to sell his inventions to fiendish ne'er-do-wells, so I sort of play with that, too... I also know about the Flash's superpowers from comics. so yeah! All that might or might not be nice to know about. 
> 
> thanks for reading~~~!

Later, Gizmo would say he hadn’t been joking about slicing Kid Flash apart; the chemical juices in that snot-licking superhero’s brain were firing weird, for sure. It would’ve been well worth investigating. Something had hardened Kid Flash’s bones so that they didn’t shatter as his feet pounded all crazy fast against the pavement. The stupid loser should have splintered into a ton of slimy pieces, torn apart by his own velocity. His heart should have burst open. But it didn’t. He was built special, like a phone that could make calls underwater vs. one that couldn’t. 

Something was up, there, and Gizmo could have figured it out. He was too young to wonder if he would have covered Kid Flash’s face before making the first incision, maybe with a rag, maybe with one of his old H.I.V.E. Fivers dodge ball shirts. He would have snickered to himself, gloves heavy with blood, goggles tight over his eyes so they dyed the world green and sickly. The goggles would record notes for him as he peeked past Kid Flash’s skull, his own observations scrolling down at the corners of his vision. 

Cruddy old superhero, whizzing around and talking big like no one could catch him. There on Gizmo’s table he’d look like a butterfly with a pin through its guts. 

Kid Flash probably wouldn’t have even had to die, though. Gizmo would have poked around in his brain, maybe gotten him to dance a little or make dumb faces at the ceiling. He’d mess with his gloppy speech centers and get him to talk like a caveman, like Mammoth sometimes when he became overwhelmed by his senses and lost his capacity for actual-person speech. It’d be funny. Then he’d take a look around for research –it was said the original Flash got his powers through an impromptu chemical shower, with or without an added lightning shock bonus. That would have left some changes both on the brain and on every other inch of stupid tissue; it would be so simple to figure out how Kid Flash worked, how he was built. Things were almost always simple once Gizmo opened them up and got a good look at them. 

Once you finish checking out a machine’s insides, you can usually just slip the shiny plastic cover back on –once everything is clicked back into place it’s like nothing was ever wrong. Gizmo would stitch Kid Flash right back up, get everything screwed in back how it’s supposed to be. Of course, sometimes the parts get all tangled up and messy afterwards, like if some of the little springs fall under the table or oil gets spilt everywhere. 

Sometimes you just can’t help making a mess. 

Gizmo was pretty good at sewing people back together, just like he was pretty good at taking machines apart and making them look like new again. He’d had a lot of practice, of course. Who do you think patched Jinx and Mammoth up after punishment sessions or run-ins with the Titans? Beast Boy could turn into a freaking tiger, and Gizmo had sewn up a few too many tiger bites with tiny sterilized hands. He’d swiped bandages from the nurse’s office back at the H.I.V.E., just like dental floss and parts from old, forgotten wheelchairs. Nowadays he robbed convenience stores for the crap they needed. Not his fanciest heists, but they served a purpose. 

The nurse in the H.I.V.E. had been dead for a while, and most students just forged around for themselves. Dances were thrown to keep students hopeful, and janitors cleaned up the blood, but it wasn’t like kids never died during training exercises. Fact was, if you got too beaten up in the H.I.V.E., if you lost too much blood, you’d probably have to get out, go home, or find yourself someone like Gizmo who knew how to sew. Not everyone passed the H.I.V.E.’s survival courses. Most people never made it past survival level four. If you did, you had a few tricks up your sleeve and a few swiped rolls of gauze in your villainous lair. 

Anyway. 

Once he knew the chemical differences that made Kid Flash so freaking special, the alterations in bone build-up, in cartilage strength, in skin elasticity, once he knew everything there was to know, Gizmo could have recreated superspeed technology. He could have filled a dripping syringe with fancy chemicals and shot it into his own spine. Maybe he’d have to open himself up, one patch at a time, and fix his body up inside, like upgrading a computer file by file, like altering a string of code with just a few numbers at once. Maybe he’d have been able to mix himself a chemical flood just like the one that hit the Flash by accident, and Gizmo’d just stand there, arms spread, as he levelled the playing field between them. 

Maybe he’d sell his new formula to the Brotherhood of Evil, to hear Jinx squeal, see her do that dumb little fist-pumping victory dance of hers. Maybe he’d start up a company to peddle his inventions, both those meant for use outside the flesh and those that took the flesh to new levels. Superpower Enhancements, like vitamins, like blaster rays. 

Really, it was just like when Gizmo had dissected a bird on his dorm room floor. He’d built a little trap for it outside, wearing street clothes – a hoodie, jeans, sneakers still a few sizes too big for him – and spread out a newspaper so no blood could soak into the carpet. In that moment, the mess wasn’t really important, even though Gizmo was the kind of guy to alphabetize his enemy’s CDs and keep all his tools in carefully labeled drawers. 

Joints could just as easily be formed with rubber and steel as muscle and bone. There were ways to compensate for meat, for cartilage, for the delicacy of tissue. There were ways to improve nature’s design, and Gizmo wasn’t a moron. He used nature’s old, outdated tech to build his wings – better, faster, durable. In a few years, Gizmo would be able to say that functionality was everything, and technology was functionality. Technology was everything. Now, he would just say it’s cool. Machines can do cool things, and that’s all you need from them, all you need from anything. 

The body was a machine, after all, and Gizmo wasn’t a doctor. He was a mechanic, an engineer, perfectly qualified to fiddle away with all the little secret bits that keep machines running as they should. He didn’t even have a lab, or a research station. He worked in a workshop, because he built stuff. He said the workshop rather than his lab. Building stuff was building stuff, and the workshop was everyone in the H.I.V.E. 5’s, even if he was the only one who used it. Sloppy crudware was one thing, but if an invention was worth something it didn’t really matter who built it. Just what it did. 

In a way, Gizmo had always thought people and animals were just the stuff that built them. There was no guarantee there was anything else beyond the gross slabs of meat, the snot and the skin; it seemed so pointless to discuss depth and feeling when he knew every thought was just prompted by neurons firing in his skull. People were machines, and all machines deserved upgrades. 

That was the thing Jinx never got about his stuff – designs and computers were never final. Everything was constantly growing, developing, building off itself. Every night after class Gizmo had gone back to his room and hunched over his systems, his programs. They needed to be polished, upgraded, improved, or he’d fall behind. People who fell behind got the snot kicked out of them. A short kid without super powers had to claw his way up the ladder without much sleep. Gizmo downed Red Bulls and sugar-sweet coffees; he ate Pop Rocks so the jolt could keep him awake. He blasted music so loud his head ached. There were pills for that. If he didn’t come out with new tricks by sunrise, he’d lose his spot. He’d fall. He could do it, and people should know he could do it. 

Everyone should know. 

People teased Gizmo for his stretched smile, the way his eyes flashed madly when he showed off one of his new toys, the smudges of shadow on his face. They teased him because they were afraid of what he’d have up his sleeve, what he’d have built into that magical little all-purpose backpack of his. They were afraid because sometimes it seemed like he’d wired himself into his suit, and that the suit could just do too much. Jinx said it looked like Gizmo had two black eyes all the time. That didn’t matter, so long as people knew that if they actually punched him out, he’d punch back harder, probably with a robotic fist that zapped and burned and seared. In a school full of crud-for-brains losers overpowered beyond comprehension, it was the only way to be. 

Gizmo was used to it. 

Only idiots finished projects for good. Gizmo’s designs were always being improved and modified; he would adapt for this kid’s ultra-special hearing, that other kid’s skin that was just raw, crackling electricity. A guy made of rock? Sure, whatever, Gizmo would have a laser that could turn stone to Silly Putty, a remote already planted in the floor that would send vibrations up through the arena and crunch stone to dust. Bye-bye, buttfaces, jerkwads, scuzzbuckets. Bye-bye, everyone else. And they thought he was so small, so young. They thought he didn’t belong. His powers could grow into a million new things. Oh, you say you can shapeshift? That’s cute. Gizmo’s working on a suit that can help him do that, too. You can multiply? Gizmo can do basically the same thing using holograms. The list went on. 

Jinx always seemed to think his inventions just poured out of him like Mumbo Jumbo grabbing bunnies from his stupid cruddy hat. Sure, they came easy. You look at one item, a vacuum, a toaster, whatever, and there are a million different things for it to be, for all the little parts inside to become. Technology is constantly adapting and endless, Gizmo knew, although he couldn’t have said it in so many words. But she would ask for something to break silently into an underwater vault, leaving no trace, simultaneously paralyzing the Atlanteans on guard and disabling their computer system. She’d ask, and Gizmo would stock up on sugary snack foods and energy drinks. She’d ask and he’d deliver, just like that. He’d grumble, sure – you dweebs take me for granted, you gotta be out of your mind, this is ridiculous, this is abuse – but he kind of liked being the miracle worker every now and again. 

That was actually kind of how he met Jinx, way back when in Junior H.I.V.E. Academy. She was a flimsy little gymnast with brittle bones and cotton-candy features. She tossed herself off walls, spinning like she didn’t think she could break. Or like she expected to shatter, anyway. She’d dislocated her shoulder and Gizmo popped it back into place –she didn’t think he could help but it wasn’t about strength, just knowing the right way to push. She said her bad luck powers didn’t just affect other people; it wasn’t just in the zappy pink lights that shot out of her fingers like Disney princess magic. 

Everything around her broke, she said, and Gizmo said that made her powers a little less cruddy and unfair than everybody else’s. She’d snarled and stormed away, but her skin had been cold and soft against his hands, smoother than his own, and he laughed at her as he watched her go. Gizmo could already tell he was going to have pretty bad acne in a couple years, but Jinx? Jinx didn’t know how great she was. 

It was great she could jump and twirl and cartwheel down the hall like she didn’t give a crap if she fell, especially because it was obvious every little thing that happened upset her so much. It was great that her hair was the color of candy. It was great that her powers balanced out. She was taking this thing that she could be scared of, this bad luck that followed her around or whatever, and she was making it hers. Owning it. Trying to forge an identity out of it, improving her circumstances. Gizmo had built himself stilt spider legs so he could stand a little taller than the people who normally towered over him. He got it. She didn’t know, couldn’t know, but he understood that while her magic was an eternal force – chance and luck were beyond a skinny chick wearing platform shoes, beyond anyone – she was just trying to redefine it so it couldn’t possess her. So she didn’t have to be scared of herself, and could toss back her pretty little head, proud as all these other high and mighty superpowered freaks. 

He’d been kind of surprised when she started taking her injuries to him, telling him to fix this, twerp. He’d say right away, barf breath, and pretend to be annoyed. Sometimes he saw her shaking and scared, but more often she just bit her lip and tried to think of angry things to say. He liked to think no one else saw her when she was so fragile, like a normal kid rather than a sorceress defined by this crazy ancient magic she wore like a second skin. He built himself electronic shields so people couldn’t beat the crap out of him in battle, and she pretended she could always control her powers. He probably wasn’t the only one who saw her that way, but it made him feel better to think about it, sometimes. 

By the time they were almost sold to Slade, they were a proper team – Gizmo, Mammoth and Jinx, trained together because they were supposed to balance one another out, and he could see why, he always could, even if he’d made a little fuss at first about working alone. That was why he suggested they go get pizza after the first time they challenged the Teen Titans. They’d pounded those wannabe heroes into the dust. It was why he played Mammoth’s board games even though they were for babies; why he let Jinx babble on to him about how she presented herself to this-and-this teacher, why she wore her hair in pigtails like Harley Quinn now instead of loose and haunting around her shoulders like she had back in Junior H.I.V.E.. It was all about the image. Whatever. Gizmo listened, because even if the word-puke coming out of her mouth didn’t matter, _she_ did. 

Jinx mattered. 

Gizmo would be able to say all that later, when it was too late. For now he’d just tease her about cooties until she groaned or smirked at him, smeared her hand down his face so he’d get infected. She was a sister, she was a mother, she was a friend and sometimes when she took the stuff he built her she would sort of rub his shaved head or mutter a tired thank you. He’d call her a jerk, a zit, a whole buttload of names. That didn’t matter. 

What mattered was that while Gizmo wasn’t joking about wanting to dissect Kid Flash, to pry that sucker open and see what made him tick, Jinx wanted to give him to the Brotherhood of Evil. So that’s what they’d do, a team under her lead because she was a tightrope walker who cared a little too much when she swayed a bit, when she looked weak. She got dibs on Kid Flash, on the video game controllers, on the best room in the house, on the sour gummy worms Gizmo liked. Whatever. It didn’t matter. He could build her stuff she wanted, and only a total snot-eating loser would back out now. She led them on bigger and better heists, and hey, even if Gizmo wanted to stay home he went along each and every time. 

They were a team, so Gizmo didn’t argue – he flopped himself down on the couch with Billy Numerous and those other jerkwads. He glanced over at Jinx, just a little, just sometimes. She’d been a constant presence for a few years now. He knew her moods, saw her getting pissy, saw her getting coy and then fangirling over that lady in red on the screen. He wasn’t really watching, but if she screamed for him, he’d come. When she bellowed for a level four containment field he kind of whined a little, but of course he built it. Of course. 

He couldn’t help out with everything, but Gizmo was along for the ride, wasn’t he?


End file.
